PDB

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.”
–Condoleezza Rice, May 16, 2002

Late 1980s, throughout the 1990s:

The idea of using hijacked planes as weapons against buildings becomes common. There are attempted kamikaze attacks involving hijacked planes in Israel (1986), Turkey (1993) and France (1994). A suicide Cessna pilot hits the White House on Sept. 12, 1994. Tom Clancy publishes a novel in which the villain crashes an airliner into the Capitol (1994). Pentagon scenario planners bring up the possibility of a kamikaze-hijacking in a variety of reports (twice in 1993; 1999; 2000).

Mid-1990s:

News reports and trial cases reveal that Ramzi Yussef (convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) devised “Project Bojinka,” a plot including the idea of crashing hijacked airliners into American targets. Foreign and U.S. intelligence and defense agencies issue warnings and devise defense scenarios relating to the possibility that something like “Project Bojinka” can be attempted anywhere, at any time.

October 2000:

The Department of Defense responds competently to these developments, by rehearsing a MASCAL (mass casualty) exercise based on the scenario of a plane crashing into the Pentagon. The live exercise of Oct. 24, 2000 involves rescue crews directed from a command center. A paper plane is set aflame within a scale model of the building.

“Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Richard Shelby, both members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, appear on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer”, and warn of potential attacks by Osama bin Laden. “One of the things that has begun to concern me very much as to whether we really have our house in order, intelligence staff have told me that there is a major probability of a terrorist incident within the next three months,” Feinstein said.“

Doesn’t that work both ways? If Senators Feinstein and Shelby were aware of an impending “terrorist incident” prior to 9/11, doesn’t that mean the President should have known? Doesn’t the President have “access to the same intelligence”? Granted, they didn’t have access to the same intelligence prior to the war. The September 21st, PDB for one. However, the Senators were aware something was going to happen. A couple of weeks before the infamous August 6th, PDB.

If the President “has access to the same intelligence”, that means he was aware of the threat of an impending “terrorist incident” prior to August 6th, 2001. That means the August 6th, PDB, in and of itself, was just one of many warnings.

Another warning was given to John Ashcroft that prompted him to no longer fly commercial aircraft.

In late August 2001, when aggressive presidential action might have changed the course of U.S. history, CIA Director George Tenet made a special trip to Crawford, Texas, to get George W. Bush to focus on an imminent threat of a spectacular al-Qaeda attack only to have the conversation descend into meaningless small talk.

Alarmed CIA officials already had held an extraordinary meeting with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10 to lay out the accumulating evidence of an impending attack and had delivered on Aug. 6 a special “Presidential Daily Brief” to Bush entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”

“A few weeks after the Aug. 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to make sure the President stayed current on events,” Tenet wrote in his memoir, At the Center of the Storm. “This was my first visit to the ranch. I remember the President graciously driving me around the spread in his pickup and my trying to make small talk about the flora and the fauna, none of which were native to Queens,” where Tenet had grown up.

Tenet’s trip to Crawford — like the July 10 meeting with Rice and the Aug. 6 briefing paper for Bush — failed to shock the administration out of its lethargy nor elicit the emergency steps that the CIA and other counterterrorism specialists wanted.

While Tenet and Bush made small talk about “the flora and the fauna,” al-Qaeda operatives put the finishing touches on their plans.…

As someone also motivated by the need for the truth about 9/11, as well as aware of the way conflicts of interest have a way of covering up truth, let me add my thanks to Philip Shenon on the release of his new book. Also let me share this recent comment forwarded to me by Monica Gabrielle of the September 11th Advocates:
*****

Philip Shenon’s new book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, serves to justify our suspicions and the concerns of the Family Steering Committee, that we attempted to publicly air during the course of the 9/11 Commission’s tenure.

One of the most egregious revelations put forth by Mr. Shenon is the fact that Philip Zelikow was hired as the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, despite his direct ties to the Bush administration. In 2000-2001 he served as a member of Condoleezza Rice’s National Security Council (NSC) transition team, where he was allegedly the “architect” of the decision to demote Richard Clarke and his counter terrorism team within the NSC. Furthermore he was a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) from 2001-2003, where Zelikow drafted most of the 2002 “National Security Strategy of the United States,” creating the pre-emptive Iraq war strategy. These areas were within the scope of the Commission’s mandate and as such were of critical importance to determine what, if any, impact they had on the government’s ability to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

As the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow was given the responsibility for choosing the entire direction of the Commission’s investigation.…

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who introduced legislation last year to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, is now aiming higher.

On the House floor this evening, the Ohio Democrat proposed impeaching President Bush. In language similar to that in the articles of impeachment he raised against Cheney, Kucinich sought support for a 35-count indictment charging Bush with misleading Congress and the American people into war with tales of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Democratic House leaders have opposed impeaching Bush or Cheney as an unhelpful distraction. They were nearly embarrassed last year when Republicans voted to take up Kucinich’s effort against Cheney in order to force a debate; they are unlikely to let the matter get so far this time.

Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, one of the groups pushing for impeachment congratulated Kucinich on his “historic leadership.”

“We’ve waited seven years to find one Member of Congress brave enough to stand up for our Constitution, for which generations of Americans have fought and died,” Fertik said. “We are thrilled and honored that Dennis Kucinich has chosen to be that one genuine patriot.”